Quotes and Images from the Memoirs of Jacques Casanova De Seingalt
Translated by Arthur Machen
Casanova's memoirs run to thousands of pages, but these are the fragments that remain: distilled wit from a man who seduced his way across 18th-century Europe and escaped from the Doge's prison in a book chest. Here are his maxims on desire, happiness, and the human condition - equal parts philosophical insight and dangerous advice. He writes that happiness is a vegetable we must pick ourselves, that beautiful women are the only prey worth pursuing, that self-interest is the only honest motive in love. Some aphorisms are tender, many are scandalous, all are unmistakably the product of a mind that refused to take existence seriously while taking it absolutely seriously. For readers who want their philosophy with a pulse and their wisdom served with a wink.
